The need to put insights at the heart of all marketing decisions is core in driving company growth. Steered by this need to show a ‘return on insights’, research activities will be increasingly engineered for impact.

Consumers are increasingly taking on an active ‘maker’ role, shaping products and solutions. Just think about the success of crowdsourcing platforms such as ‘My Starbucks Idea’ or ‘LEGO Ideas’. This implies that, next to ‘think’, ‘feel’, and ‘do’, we should also include ‘make’ in the research mix.

What people say, does not always correspond with what they actually do. This so-called ‘say-do gap’ is visible from election polls to topics like sustainability. Wanting to understand human behavior, it is therefore not enough to focus on what people ‘think’ and ‘feel’; what they ‘do’ is another vital part of the research mix.

When making a decision, one does not say ‘What do I think about this’, but rather ‘How do I feel about this’. Clearly, emotions are key drivers of decision making. This strong impact of emotions on behavior also has implications for marketing research. Are ‘feel’ activities an integral part of your research mix?

Understanding human behavior is complex and requires a multi-dimensional approach. Sometimes it might be faster, easier and better to simply ask people what they think. As such, ‘think’ activities are still an important part of the research mix.

For a long time, the dominant belief among philosophers, scientists and economists was that humans are driven predominantly by ratio. And this was no different for marketing researchers. But how realistic is this? Can we truly unravel and understand complex human behavior by solely focusing on their ‘thinking’?